Sharon Hashimoto
A scientific and cultural survey of our loosely connected hinge, the knee
Han Yu is a professor in the Department of English at Kansas State University where she teaches scientific and technical communication. In a “Last Words”...
Poet Garrett Hongo Raises his Voice with ‘Ocean of Clouds’
It has taken me some weeks to write this review of Garrett Hongo’s fourth book of poetry, Ocean of Clouds. I have read one...
Short reflections in ‘A Hundred Years and a Day’ linger long after reading
Long ago, in a 1990s introduction to psychology college class, our instructor lectured on the concept of personal strangers, those individuals we meet at...
Poetry collection ‘Auction’ offers innovative, insightful questions
Quan Barry begins Auction, her fifth book of poetry, with a Vincent Van Gogh quote: “If I am worth anything later, I am worth...
Seeing the surreal in the real China of today
In Land of Big Numbers, debut author Te-Ping Chen writes of modern China. Many young characters in this short story collection are attempting...
Jack Wang’s short stories span across time and space in the international Chinese diaspora
Although I’m new to Jack Wang’s writing, I’ve come to expect many-layered complexity in the midst of a well-told tale from him. The six...
Tangled lives and love triangles amid the backdrop of the troubled 1980s Philippines
Take two sisters, exiled to the United States because their father, a Filipino politician, opposes the incumbent dictator. The two women share family memories...
There’s a lot going on in ‘The Tatami Galaxy.’ Perhaps a bit too much?
In her two-page “Note from the Translator,” Emily Balistrieri states that when she translates, she pays attention to everything. “Most translators will agree they’re...
Tough, grittily realistic portraits of the struggling, striving Thai lower class
It’s always a pleasure to be introduced to a new voice representing a culture that has been underrepresented, especially one that is so complex...
The hands that play
Music is a complex abstraction that is difficult to convey in writing. Riku Onda’s Honeybees and Distant Thunder is a novel that manages to...
